[sseagull]

> A lot of the things we rely on every day have toxic byproducts And we should stop and fix that. Why do we accept this as ok?

Of course. But it is not always easy. You can’t always wave your hand and make non-harmful alternatives. Sometimes it is due to incentives, but also sometimes it is really just chemistry or physics.

See the “tin whisker” phenomenon when they took lead out of solder.

[vineyardmike]

> Sometimes it is due to incentives,

We can fix those. If you could sue a chemical plant (or it's engineers!) that design/implement carcinogenic pollution, i bet the incentives get better fast.

> but also sometimes it is really just chemistry or physics. >You can’t always wave your hand and make non-harmful alternatives

I think we can more often then we give it credit for. Especially if there was more money flowing into R&D, and more regulatory efforts.

> See the “tin whisker” phenomenon when they took lead out of solder.

I've never heard of this and I buy tons of electronics. Seems like industry incentives took care of this. Now we have no lead... and i can still buy iPhones whenever i want.

Why do we accept destruction in our society? Why don't we push for better? Nothing has to be the way it is if we don't want it to be.

[curryst]

> We can fix those. If you could sue a chemical plant (or it's engineers!) that design/implement carcinogenic pollution, i bet the incentives get better fast.

Or the pricing of everything goes up astronomically to account for the new risk, and the poor go back to living in the stone age because they can't afford to pay for the risk assumed by anyone using industrial processes.

Watch how quickly AC vanishes from the poor when Freyon becomes $2,000 for a refill. I doubt the chemicals we use to treat water are free of industrial carcinogens either.

> Why do we accept destruction in our society? Why don't we push for better? Nothing has to be the way it is if we don't want it to be.

Because none of this is free. Handling the tin whiskers wasn't free, there's a certification process for that now. It killed a satellite in 1998, temporarily shut down a nuclear plant, and may have been a culprit in some Toyota car issues.

That was probably worth the tradeoff. It was a fairly minor change, and the payoff was pretty good.

I don't think we can just handwave away that getting to 0 carcinogens would be a net benefit. I'd probably take a 1 in 50,000 chance of dying from industry effects rather than having to go back in time 200 years in terms of quality of life.

[sseagull]

> Especially if there was more money flowing into R&D, and more regulatory efforts.

You won’t hear any argument from me there.

To put it into perspective, the annual budget of the entire (US) National Science Foundation is $8 billion. Now compare that the revenue or even profit of google, apple, etc.